


The First Time

by Littleshebear



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 16:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18594751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littleshebear/pseuds/Littleshebear
Summary: A prompt fill from a Tumblr ask. A series of vignettes detailing the development of the relationship between Saladin and Jolder. Cute 'n fluffy.





	The First Time

The first time she sees him, there’s a battle in full swing outside the compound. It frightens her to imagine who would be mad enough to attack this warlord head-on but the opportunity to escape is too good to pass up. She charges through the hallways, trying to remember the route they’d taken when they locked her up down here. That shoulder charge she’d made into a locked, solid oak door had hurt and she didn’t have her ghost to heal her. No matter. She could still run and she’s fast. This time, she’ll be fast enough to get away. She rounds a corner and nearly runs into him. They pause, her wild, green eyes staring into his curious dark ones. She reacts first, smashing her fist into his nose. She doesn’t wait to see if her punch was strong enough to have driven his skull into his brain. She helps herself to his side-arm, trips over his prone form and carries on running. 

She darts from room to room, frantic, searching for what was stolen from her when the warlord took her prisoner. “It’s okay, I’m coming, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeats over and over, like a mantra. If she says it often enough, it will become true. She turns away from another fruitless search through a storeroom and he’s there, waiting in the doorway. There isn’t a mark on his face. Another lightbearer. 

“Easy,” he raises his hands when she levels his stolen side-arm at him. 

“I don’t know who you people are or why you have an issue with Lord Whatshisname, but I’ve got no quarrel with you.” She motions for him to step aside with the barrel of the gun. “Please stay out of my way.”

“Were you captive here?”

She nods, brushing matted red hair away from her face with her free hand.

He slowly, gingerly offers her a hand. “Come with us. You’ll be safe.”

She shakes her head. “Nuh-uh. I’m not going with another warlord. No way.”

“We’re not warlords. We’re different. Besides…” He lets his hands drop to his sides. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

“And how do you know that?” She raises her chin, doing her best to seem implacable. Defiant.

“Because that gun isn’t loaded.”

Her eyes dart toward the gun and suppresses a sigh as she realises that the chamber is indeed empty. 

He proffers his hand again. “Come with me.”

“I can’t. They took my ghost.” She swallows hard. “I don't know where they took him. It's dark where he is, he's scared.”

“I’ll help you find your ghost, then we can get out of here.”

“Will I have to fight?” She keeps the gun trained on him but the barrel droops slightly.

“Only if you choose to.” 

She finally lowers the gun. “I'm Jolder,” she states, some of the tremor leaving her voice.

“Saladin Forge.”

When she eventually places her hand in his, it feels like safety. 

-/

The first time he sees her smile is only a few minutes after their first meeting. Saladin had caught a guard, held him up against a wall and asked what had become of Jolder's Ghost. When he refused to divulge the location, Saladin made a noise in his throat that could only be described as a growl and switched to a far less polite line of questioning. He soon gave directions to the location of Jolder’s Ghost. Saladin disarmed the hapless mortal and sent him on his way with what Saladin probably thought was a light clip on the back of the head but was possibly concussion-inducing for him.

Jolder kneels on the floor in front of the lock box that she had just broken her Ghost out of. She cradles her ghost in both hands, assuring him that everything will be alright from now on. She looks to Saladin for confirmation. She breaks into a brilliant grin, happy, grateful tears forming track marks in the grime on her face. 

To Saladin, it’s a sight of transformative beauty in an otherwise ugly world and he’ll remember it forever. 

-/

The first time she catches herself staring, she’s seated outside his workshop. He picked out some pieces of armour for her and she’s supposed to be adjusting it to her size, polishing, customising. She instead finds herself fascinated by watching Saladin work on a field-forged machine gun. She’s engrossed with how engrossed he is. There’s something so compelling about a man consumed with his work. She watches thick fingers, that have no right to be as delicate and dextrous as they, are build, scrap and rebuild until he’s satisfied. She then finds herself marvelling at how the sun highlights the grey scattered through his black hair, how his eye colour shifts like tiger’s eye depending on how the light strikes them. 

He finally looks up from his work and asks how she’s getting on with her own project. She drops her gaze to the pauldron she’s fitting a buckle to and assures him that everything is indeed fine, praying that he cannot discern the blush in her cheeks.

-/

The first time she catches him staring, she’s taking a break from running combat drills with Perun. She sits on the wall of their current hideout, kicking her feet over the edge. She seems so relaxed, you would be forgiven for thinking they weren’t a small group of Lightbearers effecting a revolution against the Warlord hegemony. 

She takes a swig from a canteen, tips her head back and closes her eyes in bliss. Saladin nearly drops the sketching charcoal clutched between his fingers but rallies when she turns her gaze towards him. She realises his worst fears when she hops down off the wall and walks towards him. 

“What are you working on?” She asks, hooking the canteen to her belt. 

“Just…” He leafs frantically through his sketchbook, “I had some ideas.”

Jolder takes the sketchbook from him, “Uniforms?” She grins at him. “Are you designing us uniforms?”

“Not uniforms,” he explains, pointing to the sketches she has the book open at, “Just shared heraldry? If we become established I feel like we should have an…”

“Aesthetic?” Jolder fills in.

“A philosophy.” Saladin corrects her. “Our detractors call us the Iron Wolves. I don’t see that as an insult, so I say we adopt it. Wolves are social animals. They take care of their pack, they look out for one another. Like we do.”

“And the trees?” Jolder asks, gliding her fingers down another sketch, cocking her head in interest. 

Saladin shrugs. “Roots. I feel like this will go way beyond what we’ve sown here.”

Jolder nods in approval and leafs through the rest of the designs. “These are amazing. Have you shown them to Radagast? He’d love them.” She keeps leafing through once she hits blank pages, despite the tension in Saladin’s demeanour when she does so. She eventually hits pages that are decidedly not blank. She pauses to see what Saladin has drawn there. She sees herself looking out at her. Herself, sitting on their own boundary wall. Studies of her hands, her face, her eyes especially. She stops still, taking in the image of herself rendered many times over in charcoal. 

He snatches the book back from her, and stalks back towards his quarters with the sketchbook clutched to his chest. 

-/

The first time they spar, they do not hold back. Both have budding black eyes, they have bloody noses but they smile through their injuries. These are lightbearer drills, they don't abide by the usual rules. Saladin locks his ankle behind hers and Jolder tumbles towards the ground, laughing as she goes. By any metric, she’s lost, she’s pinned by him. He waits for her to yield. She threads her fingers through his and smirks seductively at him, very much aware how heavily they’re both breathing. He falls for her flirtatious gambit hook, line and sinker. Once she senses him relax, she brings her leg up between his and ignores his yelp of pain as she strikes his crotch. She flips hims beneath her and laughs uproariously when Radegast calls the match.

-/

The first time she kisses him, it’s a surprise to them both. The battle had been hard, they had died death after death driving the Fallen back but their ranks finally broke. Saladin leans forward, bracing his hands against his knees. He allows himself a smile, his one concession to triumphalism in the wake of victory. 

Jolder is far more effusive. She charges towards him, crying, “We won!” She launches into a play by play of the day’s events, gesticulating wildly about strategies that they’d pulled off, how they’d known what the other was planning without having to speak, how their combat was more like dancing, as they knew each other’s steps. Her enthusiastic recounting of the battle finally elicits a laugh from him and she responds by grabbing his head in both hands and pulling him towards her. She plants a kiss fully on his lips. When she finally releases him, he stares back at her in a daze. She holds his gaze for an uncomfortable beat before excusing herself, mumbling something about checking on the mortal conscripts from the village they were defending.

From the ridge above, Radegast and Perun convene. “The East flank held,” Radegast states tiredly, but not without pride.

“Did you doubt it?” 

“No,” He stretches, his overworked joints and muscles creaking as he does so. “But I understand the odds you were up against. You fought well.”

“The villagers fought, I just told them were to stand.” She takes a swing from her canteen before upending the remainder over her head, rubbing the worst of the battle grime from her close-cropped hair.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he tails off, observing the scene below and shaking his head in wry amusement. 

“What is it?” Perun follows his gaze then chuckles. “Oh. Those two. Besotted.”

“Completely.”

“Clueless.”

“Utterly.”

“How long do you think they’ll carry on dancing around each other?” asks Perun, watching Saladin wander around in confused little circles as he tries to decide what to do following Jolder’s spontaneous display of affection. 

“It’ll be some time next year if the consensus in Efrideet’s betting pool is anything to go by.”

“Efrideet’s what?” Perun snorts in amusement at their latest recruit’s antics. “That girl. She’s playing with fire.”

“They’ll probably see the funny side,” Radegast muses.

“Jolder will see the funny side. Saladin will eviscerate her when he finds out.”

Radegast chuckles, “They’re a strange pair, it’s true.”

“They’re good for one another. They balance each other out. They’ll figure it out.” Perun pauses, coming to a decision. “Put me down for twenty glimmer. I reckon they’ll get it together by the first snow this year. 

“That soon?”

“Eh,” she shrugs, “I’m rooting for them.”

-/

The first time they make love is well after winter’s bite set in, long after Perun lost her stake in the betting pool. His touch is as reverential as it is hesitant, as though he’s afraid that this was all some misunderstanding and it could be called off at any moment. 

His doubts are put paid to when she announces her climax by calling his name, allows him to flip her beneath him and Traveler help him, she’s digging her nails into his back. 

In the peace of the afterglow, he lies on his back, Jolder’s head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. She absently traces her fingers back and forth along his chest. Saladin stares at the ceiling, part of him not quite believing that what just happened did in fact happen.

“The others are probably wondering where we got to.”

Jolder chuckles, remembering Efrideet’s pool. “They’re really not.”

-/

The first time he raises his voice at her in anger is the last. He’s tired, the last battle with the Fallen was exhausting and demoralising. The town he was defending could not be saved, an evacuation was the best he could muster. Jolder approaches, cognisant of his scowl but determined to lift his mood. 

“You got them out, that’s great!” Saladin cringes at the contrast between the bereft villagers and Jolder’s encouraging smiles. 

“Not all of them,” he grunts in response, walking past her. 

“Saladin,” she insists to his turned back. “All of these people are alive because of you. You should be proud.”

Logically, he know she’s right. He knows today is a net gain but he’s seen so much anguish, so much grief today that he doesn’t have the energy for Jolder’s relentless positivity. 

“We saved these ones, yes, but how many did we lose?” He thunders, rounding on her. “Do you even know? Not everything is for the best, Jolder, not every cloud has a silver lining!”

She flinches as if struck by a physical blow. “I’ll make sure they all get a hot meal, don’t worry.” She turns away from him. “I’ll see you later.”

Saladin spends the remainder of the day dealing with the fall out from the battle, writing field reports, organising refugee housing, all with the cold creep of guilt worming its way up his spine. Once the day’s work is done, he turns to the task of working up the courage to knock on her door. When she calls him in, she doesn’t seem angry. He would have preferred that. She’s seated on her couch, her knees drawn up to her chest. She sports an expression of worry that he doesn’t feel he deserves.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a defeated whisper.

“You’re too hard on yourself. You did a good thing today, I just wanted you to see that.”

“I know. I had no call to speak to you like that.”

She stares at him for an excruciating moment, those normally vivacious green eyes wide and sad. The tension finally breaks when she holds her hand to him, clenching and unclenching her fingers in a beckoning motion. He puts his hand in hers and kneels before her in contrition. She doesn’t have the patience for this knightly performance so she pulls him into her arms. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, not sure if it’s for his benefit or hers.

“It’s okay,” she assures him, trailing her fingers through his dark curls.

“No, it is not,” he mumbles into her shoulder. 

“You care, that’s all,” she assures him, dropping a kiss on his head for emphasis. “I wouldn’t love you so much if you didn’t.”

“I have bad days sometimes,” he tightens his arms around her. He can’t remember the last time he allowed himself to be this vulnerable around someone else. It definitely hasn’t happened in this life before. “I should never have taken it out on you.”

“You have as many bad days as you want,” she pulls back to rest her brow against his, cradling his head in her hands. “I’ll ride them out with you.”

-/

Saladin waits for Jolder at the base of the ship’s gangplank. He scowls up at the castle before them, telling himself that his black mood is down to the warlord who challenged them. When Jolder emerges his breath stops momentarily. The shine of her armour, the way she hefts her battle-axe, the confidence in her gait, the impeccably applied “warpaint.” He never tires of the sight. She halts beside him and fixes him with an interrogatory stare. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he demurs. She cocks her head, sceptical and unimpressed. They’ve been friends, comrades in arms and lovers for decades now. His taciturn protestations don’t work on her anymore. He opens his mouth to speak, flounders, then again. His third attempt succeeds. “I volunteered to be your second.”

“You did.”

“You chose Efrideet.”

“I did.” She allows him a window of silence to give him a chance to explain his bad mood but he doesn’t avail himself of the opportunity. “Perun advised in favour of Efrideet.” She receives a grunt in response. “She worries that you can get too emotional.”

“I’m not emotional!” he snaps, before immediately clamping his mouth shut in embarrassment. Jolder shoots him an indulgent smile, that look of patient benevolence that never fails to break through his irritable facade. 

“Talk to me, tell me what’s wrong.” 

“I thought,” he falters, “I assumed…” He finally settles on, “We’re a team.”

“We are,” she assures him, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder, “But this isn’t about us. This is about stopping Rience.” She leans her axe against the ship and frames his face in her hands. “Saladin. After everything we’ve been through, you still don’t think that I love you?”

“I-I don’t always feel like I deserve it. I hear what people say. He’s moody, what does she see in him? She’s so happy, he’s so miserable. We’re an odd couple, everyone says so.”

She brings her lips to his, doing her best to reassure him. “I don’t care what ‘people’ say and ‘everyone’ can go hang. I love you. I’m grateful you found me that day. I’m so glad it was you.”

Saladin’s lips twitched into a smile. “You punched me.”

“But you came after me, you still made sure I was safe, helped me. You’re a good man, that’s why I love you, moods and all. Don’t ever doubt that. Now…” She picks up her axe and takes his arm. “Come cheer me on.”

Rience’s champion waits for her with a cocky smirk on his face. Jolder nods politely to him. “Melig, isn’t it?”

“Lady wolf.”

Jolder and Saladin exchange a knowing look. “I like wolves,” states Jolder before donning her helm. 

In the end, she doesn’t need a second. Rience and his champion underestimate her and the rest of the Iron Wolves as he calls them. A warlord might have lands, soldiers to command, poisons, neurojammers and all manner of things to help him win a battle. None of it matters. Jolder has a pack. As she listens to them cheer her on, one voice stands out. It’s not the loudest, not the most strident. He’s gruff and serious but it is his words that spur her to victory.


End file.
